This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, click the "Reprints" link at the bottom of any article.

More On Tax Planning

Precious Metal Taxation
Precious metals can be used to better diversify a portfolio but can be volatile. The tax implications of investing in these types of assets vary depending upon the situation.

Cafeteria Plans
The income tax treatment of cafeteria plans is key to their popularity. Learn how to maximize the tax benefits of these “flexible benefit plans”.

This is the 15th in a series of 23 tax tips thatAdvisorOneis publishing on each business day in March as part of our Tax Planning Special Report (see ourSpecial Report calendarfor a more complete list of topics to be covered and experts who will deliver their insights).

The tax tip today comes from Gavin Morrissey, director of advanced planning at Commonwealth Financial Network, in San Diego. Morrissey consults with Commonwealth's independent broker-dealer reps on issues involving insurance, tax, executive benefits, business, and estate and charitable planning. He also consults with advisors on concentrated stock and stock option planning and writes a tax planning blog for AdvisorOne.

“I’m not sure it’s clicked in yet,” Morrissey says. “I think there’s still a level of disbelief that they can leave so much alone and still have it protected from estate taxes. You don’t have to go through high-level planning to protect $10 million [for married couples].”

Indeed, Morrissey finds some clients still paralyzed by the uncertainty of what will happen in two years when the exemption is revisited by Congress—during the presidential campaign, no less. “They’re scared to do anything. For the wealthier clients, I say, we know what the law is right now, that’s what we can plan for.”

Morrissey’s advice for high-net-worth clients: “Start giving away assets. You can’t get a better deal than the $5 million lifetime exemption.” He says ultra wealthy clients also may want to couple the exemption with other strategies that can garner discounts, such as family limited partnerships, limited liability companies, installment sales, intentionally defective trusts,irrevocable life insurance trusts or grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs). “You want to leverage this $5 million exemption to the greatest extent possible.”

Like others, Morrissey points out that GRATs are under siege. The last Congress came close to passing a 10-year term limit on this strategy whose utility is greatest over a two-to-three-year period, and President Obama proposed the longer term in his recent budget message. “If you’re wealthy and have assets that are likely to appreciate quickly, implement a GRAT while it’s still a good law,” Morrissey says.